Celebrated as one of the most poignant stylists of his generation, André Aciman has written a luminous series of linked essays about time, place, identity, and art that show him at his very finest. From beautiful and moving pieces about the memory evoked by the scent of lavender; to meditations on cities like Barcelona, Rome, Paris, and New York; to his sheer ability to unearth life secrets from an ordinary street corner, Alibis reminds the reader...

In recognition of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author's long and lauded career as a master essayist, a landmark collection, including her most beloved pieces and some rarely seen work, rigorously curated by the author herself.

"From a National Book Award finalist and a powerful literary mind, an incisive new work examining capitalism's toxic creep into the land, our bodies, and our thinking. When she receives a dermatological diagnosis of extreme sensitivity -- thin skin -- Jenn Shapland considers just how thin the barrier is between herself and the world, and how deeply vulnerable we all are to our surroundings. As she becomes aware of the impacts her tiniest choices have...

"Engaging, unusual essays written over the last two decades, on matters literary, social, cultural, and personal--from the explosive date rape debates of the '90s to the ubiquitous political adultery of the '00s, from Anton Chekhov to Celine Dion. Here is Mary Gaitskill the essayist: witty, direct, penetrating to the core of each issue, personality, or literary trope (On Updike: "It is as if [he] has entered a tiny window marked 'Rabbit,' and, by...

This collection of Ursula K. Le Guin's recent talks, essays, introductions is the best manual we have for exploring the worlds explored in recent fiction; the most useful guide to the country we're visiting, life.

"The first collection from a Whiting Writers' Award winner whose work has become a fixture of The Paris Review and n+1. Can civilization save us from ourselves? That is the question J.D. Daniels asks in his first book, a series of six letters written during dark nights of the soul. Working from his own highly varied experience -- as a janitor, a night watchman, an adjunct professor, a drunk, an exterminator, a dutiful son -- he considers how far books...

"From graffiti gangs and Grand Theft Auto to sugar daddies, Schopenhauer, and a deadly game of Russian roulette, in these essays, Chelsea Hodson probes her own desires to examine where the physical and the proprietary collide. She asks what our privacy, our intimacy, and our own bodies are worth in the increasingly digital world of liking, linking, and sharing. Starting with Hodson's own work experience, which ranges from the mundane to the bizarre--including...

"From the universally acclaimed, best-selling author of the National Book Award-winning The Year of Magical Thinking: ten pieces never before collected that offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary writer. Here are six pieces written in 1968 from the "Points West" Saturday Evening Post column Joan Didion shared from 1964 to 1969 with her husband, John Gregory Dunne about: American newspapers; a session with Gamblers Anonymous;...

This is a book about ownership. It begins with an essay about being given a man's furniture while he's on trial for murder and follows with essays that question corporeal, familial, and intellectual forms of ownership. It explores what it means to believe that a hand, or a child, or a country, or a story belongs to you; and what happens if you're wrong.